At around this time, the night before the main Imperial attack, Tarkin dispatched a platoon of stormtroopers under CaptainJanzor to act as a distraction. Although all but three would be killed, due to a combination of a crash, unforeseen hostile fauna, and underestimating the Wookiees, they managed to distract the Wookiee forces long enough for the main Imperial thrust to conquer an entire continent.

The battle

At Kachirho, the landed Imperial troops ordered the Wookiees to hand over the fugitive Jedi, but the enraged Wookiees attacked the troops, and Starstone and her Jedi soon joined the battle. As more Imperial forces landed, the Wookiee warriors and the Jedi covered the evacuation of Kachirho, as countless Wookiees fled the Imperial troopers, fleeing from enslavement. Imperial landers and gunships were engaged by Oevvaor jet catamarans, retrofitted with rocket launchers and other high-end military hardware, salvaged by the Wookiees from the remains of the earlier Battle of Kashyyyk. Realizing that the Empire was attacking indiscriminately, many traders and merchants onworld began to evacuate Wookiee families while others used their craft's concealed weapons to engage various imperial transports. By this time, all of the troopers of the first wave were dead.

A local hour after the attack had started, Lord Vader flew a Theta-class T-2c shuttle down to Kachirho, in an attempt to hunt the Jedi down. He was accompanied by Commander Appo and a squad of troops, but met heavy anti-air fire on his way down. Around the planet, the Imperial incursions were being repulsed by fierce Wookiee warriors, and an alarming number of Imperial troops were being lost in the assaults. Following Appo's advice, Vader acceded the fleet commanders the permission to begin orbital bombardment, warning them to save Kachirho for last.

Landing on a platform high up in Kachirho, Vader and his cadre of stormtroopers disembarked and began fighting their way through the Wookiee warriors.

Confronting the Jedi

In order to prevent further Wookiee casualties, the Jedi revealed themselves. Olee Starstone had since broken off from Roan Shryne, who had since joined his mother's Drunk Dancer, now leading a group of surviving Jedi they had located. Vader ordered the stormtroopers to stay on the Wookiees, leaving the Jedi to him. Siadem Forte and Iwo Kulka quickly attacked Vader, attempting to unbalance him by using radically different lightsaber forms. However, Vader easily held them off, utilizing a combination of precision bladework and swift power attacks to put an end to their fancy twirling, putting his superior height and strength to good use to disrupt their momentum and sending them reeling. Vader decapitated the two Jedi, and quickly disabled Jambe Lu, Nam Poorf and Klossi Anno.

Olee Starstone was suddenly alone against the Sith Lord. Starstone attempted to bring down Vader with a sudden offensive flurry, but realized that Vader was only allowing her to vent. Breaking off to reassess her strategy, she unwittingly allowed Vader to seize the offense. However, before he could finish Starstone, Vader's Stormtroopers were suddenly gunned down by a smuggler vessel that just appeared. Roan Shryne leaped off the Drunk Dancer, summoning Siadem Forte's lightsaber to his hand and beheading Appo. Confronting Vader, Shryne provided Starstone and the other surviving Jedi with a chance to escape.

Shryne vs. Vader

As the two fought, Shryne managed to hold his own against Vader's relentless assault, actually scoring several hits. However, their battle was interrupted by the Imperial orbital bombardment.

Darth Vader and clone troopers fighting Wookiees.

As Shryne and Vader fought, the main battle began to drift east of the city, moving closer to the lake, as Imperial gunships and artillery drove the Wookiees down out of the city and towards the ground. Heading to the main Kachirho landing platform, Archyr and Starstone loaded their drop ship and transport with escaping Wookiees, including Chewbacca.

Abruptly, the Imperial gunships began to break off from Kachirho, as the orbiting Star Destroyers began their orbital bombardment. Shryne and Vader’s duel was interrupted by the strike, and the two moved inside one of the great wroshyr trees. Though they both survived, Vader's shuttle was destroyed by the flak. As they resumed their combat, Shryne deduced the weakness of Vader's suit to be the chest-mounted control-panel. His attempts to attack the panel forced Vader to adopt a defensive fighting method that left his limbs open, ultimately prompting him to resort to a telekinetic assault. Tearing apart the wooden ramps and platforms within Kachirho, Vader flung the debris at the hapless Jedi, battering him and knocking him off the platform on which they fought.

Fallen to a floor below, Shryne lay critically injured. Assured that Shryne was going to die anyway, Vader chose not to strike down the Jedi, instead revealing his true identity to the man—Anakin Skywalker, who was later redeemed by his son Luke Skywalker during the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY.

As Shryne died, Victory-class Star Destroyers began to descend into atmosphere, completing the conquest of Kashyyyk. Approximately two hundred thousand Wookiees, including Tarfful, were captured and moved to containment camps on the Wawaatt Archipelago.

Daring escape

Meanwhile, escaping Kashyyyk, Starstone and the surviving Jedi rendezvoused with the Drunk Dancer in orbit, where they learned that a Detainer CC-2200 interdictor cruiser was stationed over Kachirho, preventing any ships from escaping into hyperspace from that city. Undaunted, Starstone and Bitters hatched a plan to destroy it in order to escape. With the help of Chewbacca, Archyr, Cudgel, and the rescued Wookiees, the pair managed to reactivate a damaged Recusant-class light destroyer, a Separatist ship left over from the earlier battle weeks ago.

They tasked the droid-controlled destroyer to ram the Interdictor, destroying the ship and giving the transports trapped in orbit about Kashyyyk a chance to escape.

Enraged at this, Lord Vader ordered a full orbital bombardment of the planet.

Aftermath

Tarkin would later relate to Palpatine that the planet suffered much more damage than one would have expected, especially given the resources under Vader’s command. Nonetheless, Kashyyyk had been claimed by the Empire, and Tarkin—perhaps aided by Trandoshanslavers which descended onto the world in masses following the battle—had gained a valuable new source of slave labor for the Death Star project.

Vader's involvement in the Empire's victory was eventually stated in a Holonet news report, a report that was broadcasted as far as Tatooine. It was thanks to this report that Obi-Wan Kenobi learned that Vader, real name Anakin Skywalker, had in fact survived their duel on Mustafar, instead of having died as he earlier believed.